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<title>Absolution is the Taste of Your Lips by Morpheus626</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060336">Absolution is the Taste of Your Lips</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626'>Morpheus626</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Pacific (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:55:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>984</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Snafu, Sledge, belief, and love.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Absolution is the Taste of Your Lips</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired by this Nick Cave track: https://open.spotify.com/track/407ltk0BtcZI8kgu0HH4Yj</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were few topics they hadn’t tackled, in their years together, both while at war and after coming home. </p>
<p>Belief was one of the delicate ones. Snafu knew Eugene was Christian, had watched him scribbling in the margins of the pocket Bible he’d carried throughout the war. But they’d never deeply gone into the subject of god or gods. It simply hadn’t come up, didn’t effect their relationship in a big enough way to be an immediate topic of discussion. They could each believe as they needed, and knew the other would still be right by their side. </p>
<p>Yet he wasn’t surprised when it did come up, one summer night, laying in their nightclothes on a blanket in the backyard, waiting for sleep that wasn’t coming with their nightmares as bad as they were. </p>
<p>“I wonder where I stand with Him,” Eugene sighed quietly, puffing away at his pipe, leaned back on his arms, staring out into the stars. “You ever wonder anything like that?” </p>
<p>“How do ya mean? Like, because of what we had to do over there…people we killed, other things we did?” Snafu asked, thinking of the golden teeth he’d collected, and almost immediately thrown away except for one once they’d gotten home and settled. The one left, in a wooden box he’d carved himself, was a reminder, painful but necessary. A reminder of what anyone could do, under certain conditions, but how it didn’t make it right. A symbol of the shame that he knew would linger forever, but that he couldn’t erase, just like he couldn’t go back in time and leave those bodies alone. </p>
<p>“Yeah, but other stuff too,” Eugene replied. “Just…everything, ever. The big things and all the little things too. Like Deacon dying the way he did, in my dad’s arms, and him not ever getting to see me again. And the bigger things, like…the baby in that house in Okinawa…” </p>
<p>Snafu winced. That still stung him too. Another moment, where if he could go back, react differently, he would. He could say so much about that moment, how they were shell-shocked and hardened to so much at the time that they simply didn’t recall how to react properly to a crying baby. But that didn’t change that what they’d nearly done, what thoughts had gone through their heads…would haunt them forever. And he knew it was both of them, could remember so clearly the look in Eugene’s eyes that echoed his thoughts and fears in those minutes back at him, like they were one. </p>
<p>“I suppose it all adds up, one way or another,” Snafu mumbled. “But as to how it looks once you’ve added it all up? S’pose we won’t know till we die, if there’s even anythin’ out there.” </p>
<p>Eugene turned his head slightly and cocked it like a confused puppy. “You don’t…I mean, I sort of figured, but…” </p>
<p>“Put it this way,” Snafu sighed. “Maybe there’s someone out there in the clouds who controls it all, maybe there isn’t. All I know is what’s happened to me so far, good and bad, and what I’ve had to do to get rid of the bad and to hold on tight to the good. And that all of that work has been on me, and no prayin’ or anythin’ like that has made any of it any easier. Nothin’ wrong with believin’ of course, if it makes you…I don’t know, feel stronger, better. I just…I sit in my own place, with whatever god might be out there. Everyone’s got their own place like that, I figure. No one believes the exact same way.” </p>
<p>Eugene nodded. “Fair enough. Gotta tell you though…you’re gonna laugh, but I always thought God brought us together. Saw the shit we were goin’ through, saw how it was gonna effect us, and put us together to get through it. Don’t know if I would have survived without you.” </p>
<p>Snafu patted the blanket near his head, and waited for Eugene to put out his pipe and lay back beside him before snuggling close to him. “You could be right. Could be God. Could just be love.” </p>
<p>“How’s that?” </p>
<p>“I think love has its own way. Even before you meet someone, even before you know you’re fallin’ for ‘em. Love’s just…out there, like the air or somethin’. Finds you when the time is right, and finds who you click with. You gotta do the rest, the stayin’ in love part, but that bringing together, that first spark…that’s love just existing, and doin’ what it needs to so the world keeps spinnin’, so people make it through tough shit,” Snafu replied. </p>
<p>“I like that,” Eugene said. “Think love did a good job with us. Makin’ sure we found each other.” </p>
<p>Snafu pressed a kiss softly to the corner of Eugene’s mouth. “Sure did. Wouldn’t ever want to be with anyone else. I don’t even know what that looks like, and I don’t want to.” </p>
<p>“Same here,” Eugene’s mouth was warm as he kissed him back. “Here’s to love for making sure you found me.” </p>
<p>“You mean for making sure you found me, right? Kept me alive on Guaducanal just to make sure we ended up together, I think,” Snafu smiled, but slow as he fought against the heaviness of his eyelids. It seemed utterly irrational, that it would be easier to sleep in the backyard with only the fence keeping them safe from anything else, but maybe that wasn’t it. It was Eugene next to him, warm and soft and sweet, and the stars they could see above them. </p>
<p>Maybe God. Maybe Love. Maybe some combination. Whatever it was, he was grateful beyond words that it had led him to Eugene, to a home that felt like home, where even if the worst memories reached them they could find safety in each other.</p>
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